This invention relates generally to social networking systems, and more particularly, to presenting news stories to users in a social networking system.
Social networking systems allow their users to share information and interests with each other. Users of the social networking system may share various types of content with other users, such as photos, status messages, comments, events, or links. Shared content may include links from external sources, such as third party web pages including articles, news stories, commentaries, photos, and the like. For example, a user may post an external link or content about a news story on a news feed, post a link on a user profile page, or send a link to a group of users in the social networking system. Viewing users or users that are connected to the posting user (“connected users”) in the social networking system may click on, comment on, like, share, or otherwise interact with the posted link the post.
Social networking system users increasingly learn about interesting or breaking news stories, as well as trending articles or topics in the news, from links to news stories shared by other social networking system users. A popular or trending news topic may be shared with a viewing user in the social networking system before the viewing user hears or reads about the story on a television broadcast, a news website, or via other media. In addition, users prefer to view news stories relevant to their personal interests or to view news stories interesting to social networking system users connected to them or having similar interests. However, conventional social networking systems do not allow a user to readily identify news stories of interest to the user.